Cuba introduces performance-based salary

Havana, June 12 (IANS) Cuba has introduced performance-based salary for its employees, ending the system of equal pay for its workers. The government of President Raul Castro has given all state enterprises a deadline of Aug 1 to comply with the new system, Spain’s EFE news agency reported Thursday quoting official daily Granma.

“The system under which everyone gets the same (pay) is not appropriate,” Deputy Labour Minister Carlos Mateu Pereira told the newspaper Wednesday.

Mateu said that “correct implementation” of the new policy would enable Cuba to conform to “the socialist principle of distribution, wherein each person receives according to his or her contribution, that is: pay for quantity and quality.”

Raul Castro, who became Cuba’s president in February after holding the job on a provisional basis since older brother Fidel fell ill in July 2006, says performance-linked pay will boost efficiency and productivity.

The overhaul of the compensation package for the employees is part of the “improvement” model that Raul as the then armed forces minister had established in the military and defence-related activities 20 years ago, Mateu said.

Granma pointed out that the revised pay system sets no upward limit on employees’ compensation package.

Earlier the president, while relaxing restrictions on Cuban citizens on buying consumer goods like computers and mobile phone, acknowledged the need to increase the average pay of the workers who earned the equivalent of $17 a month.